Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Amateur Gardening

    Focus on… Sweetcorn

    Apr 28, 2020 4 minutes

    ONCE you’ve tried fresh, homegrown sweetcorn, nothing shop-bought will compare, but isn’t it tricky to grow? Not with the right treatment! Let’s look at what this must-grow crop loves…

    Back to school

    Sweetcorn is actually a massive, lofty grass. Its reputation for being fickle comes down to the way it photosynthesises. Giving you a quick biology lesson, most plants use the C3 pathway for this energygiving process but sweetcorn, having evolved in arid regions, uses C4.

    C4 is excellent in hot, dry summers but struggles in cool, damp ones. So a bad summer can result in poor corn. But don’t despair! There are loads of ways to combat this (see panel, right) that focus on starting plants

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from Amateur Gardening

    Amateur Gardening7 min read
    The Best Blooms For Eating
    I have been a reader of Amateur Gardening for many years and have written about gardens and plants at different times in its past. It is great to see it saved and re-invigorated by Kelsey Publishing and editor Kim Stoddart. When I moved to my town ga
    Amateur Gardening5 min read
    Forward Thinking-naturally
    My experiences attempting to garden entirely for free for the Guardian newspaper more than a decade ago changed the way that I garden forever. I had to politely put aside the conventional gardening ‘rule book’ of the time in order to figure out how t
    Amateur Gardening2 min read
    Sensational Squash Family, Resilient Salad Leaves And Succession Sowing
    I adore pumpkins, courgettes and squashes - and I know I’m not alone. So, let’s take a look at this vast group of huge edibles - there’s more to them than you might think. Botanically, all these plants are in the cucurbit family. Specifically, seven

    Related